"Chef's Special." Two words, if you're a diner of the adventurous sort and happen to visit Lucky's King Wah in Glendale, that are a good idea to remember.

Not a single dish but an assortment of several, the Chef's Special is more or less the Chinese restaurant's off-the-cuff version of omakase, the Japanese term that leaves your meal up to the chef. In this case, Hong Kong-born Kwok Pat.

You won't find the Chef's Special on the menu. Kwok, or wife and server Kitty, will most likely suggest it. And at this satisfying restaurant of Cantonese cuisine, it's a dining experience that's as enjoyable as it is effortless.

"Remembering that you liked the shrimp on the tofu appetizer, Kwok may show it to you again, this time as a paste and spooned into a fried trio of fleshy slices of eggplant, tofu, and soft yellow peppers doused in a briny sauce. Or as honey walnut shrimp, a decidedly unhealthy but addictive indulgence of lightly battered and fried shrimp coated in a clingy, sweet, and lemony mayonnaise-based sauce amid a handful of candied walnuts. And because you answered yes when he asked if you liked lamb, you may be served an excellent, ginger-spiked stew of it, its tender meat needing little effort to be coaxed from the bones and the accompanying strips of long, half-chewy bean curd heavy from having taken on the flavor of the broth."

Hungry for more? Read my full review of Lucky's King Wah in Glendale here.